SPEAKER_03 0:00

Like most old-fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one. And since irregular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed and stained with a mahogany color of the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main top of his vessel.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

We performed at a 12th century Bott and Mott what is it? Mott and Bailey, is that right? Let me have another go at that. We performed at a 12th century Mott and Bailey Castle Ruin, which was a lovely way to end. And then we've got uh about five more weeks of indoor theatres now. So we run until the beginning of October.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Yeah. Regular listeners uh of Pequad Pod, our beloved Scrimshanders, uh, will probably have noticed that we've been like uh doing a lot more, uh releasing a lot more interviews lately. Uh in part because uh with with like touring and different uh scheduling things, it's sometimes easier to get those recorded. But once Johnny's wrapped up on that, I imagine uh we'll probably have like a higher percentage of main narrative episodes to interviews, even though it's been kind of flipped, kind of flipped uh recently. But it's also been very fun. Uh the interviews have been a whole lot of fun to do. We've had we've got some great ones already recorded, some of them already released that have been a lot of fun, and then uh some that have not yet been released. Like uh I I know Meg, you got to talk with the the people from the whaling museum. It was very fun listening through that. That's a fun one too.

SPEAKER_03 2:27

Yes, that's gonna be a fun one. If what you have craved this whole time is context about ships, stay tuned, brothers.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Knowing, yeah, if you want to know what's a boat, what's a ship? Uh what how do they work?

SPEAKER_03 2:39

What is a boat? What is a ship? Who are we in relation to them? How are we changed by them? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

How closely do you have to sleep next to some other smelly guy? Um, all that stuff is that's upcoming. Uh, how's how are things going in new your new uh abode?

SPEAKER_03 2:57

It's going well. I wish I had more whale boat-shaped furniture. Alas, I have to settle for my um, I think a dead stock we work couch, but I like I like that a lot. But if I could have something in the shape of the bow of a whaling ship, that would be great.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

I wonder if any of our listeners have like a bed like that. Like a whale.

SPEAKER_03 3:20

Yeah, I think that would be cool for like a little kid, like a bunk bed or something. They must.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

I think it would be really cool for a 31-year-old man. Uh just just plucking an uh an example out of the sky.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

That sounds pretty fun. Welcome to Pequod Pod, the podcast on the Wonder World of Herman Melville. Uh, my name is Tristan. I'm Meg.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

And I was the famous Johnny, so-called by the whaleman.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Lovely. And uh uh welcome to Pequod Pod. Uh so uh the podcast on the Wonder World of Herman Melville. Today we're talking about the pulpit, chapter eight. Uh a short one, but an interesting one. And I think well worth our uh full undivided attention. So uh Meg, will you give us a little bit of a plot synopsis of this one? Um if you if you can. For sure.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

This one's this one's a barn burner. So in this chapter, Father Maple comes in. Yay! The crowd goes wild. So Ishmael basically says you know, watches him come and ascend to the pulpit essentially. But um, we get a lot of inform it's interesting uh contextual information, which is to say that he used to be a sailor. And um the pulpit of the chapel is made to look like a ship, sort of in his honor. Um he has to get into it by climbing a ladder instead of sort of going up a staircase. And there's a painting of a ship in a storm that sits above where he's gonna stand, sort of like like the lectern, and then the pulpit itself is made to look like the bow or the front of a ship.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Very nice. Thank you for that. Um cool. So, Johnny, what do you find interesting about this guy?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

I think the hand that he had in the sort of design of the pulpit itself is really, really interesting. Uh he seems to have really wanted it to take the form of this ship. I mean, it's it's it's just really fascinating. He seems to have uh confabulated with the with the architect. Where's the section that I found really, really interesting? Um the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. So Maple himself has actually had a hand in making this pulpit look like a ship.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Johnny, coming off of your trials and tribulations of like simply having a bathroom redone, can you imagine sort of the um what it would entail to try to get it made to look like part of a ship?

SPEAKER_00 6:12

I don't I'm struggling to get it made so that it looks like anything.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

It looks like a bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

So um yeah, I think there are other things that I might want to do.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Can it look like a bathroom? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

I'd love that. That that's really that's that's the the baseline. And then yeah, if it we might want to think about like retractable stairs um a little bit later. Maybe we'll get a pulpit put in, who knows?

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Yeah. Uh quick uh uh side conversation. So having lived in Europe and traveled around it a good bit, uh bathrooms are notably small. Now, like is your bathroom like in my mind like kind of this little closet type thing, or is this like how big of a project is it for you to like redo a bathroom uh where you are? Or or is it completely different? Do you have like a big ol' American type bathroom?

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Absolutely not. No, I I mean you yeah, I pick see pictures of bathrooms that you could sort of run in and and you know and and sort of be going for ages before you touched a wall. No, it well, so our our our house that we lived in was built in the 20s, and it's one of those ones where you've got a very, very small sort of WC and then you've got a a sort of a bathroom behind that. And so, no, the biggest part and sort of most arduous part of the process is the the knocking through of one into the other so that it becomes a still pretty small but a bit less small room. It's two small rooms at the minute, and we want it to become one sort of slightly larger one.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Uh okay, so you've got like a room where there's a toilet in it, and then you got a room where there's a bath or like a shower or something in that.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

That's right. I've and I've never understood that. That seemed to be all the rage, yeah, aro around that kind of time period and even beyond, and I really, really don't understand it.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Interesting. Okay, so yeah, I mean, going back to to Meg's question, um, maybe that's like an easier thing. Like if you had like, you know, if you just pulled somebody off the street that knows how to like do something with wood in New Bedford at the time, maybe like I don't know how to make a pulpit, but I do know how to make a boat.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Yeah. What if we combined powers one really good project?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

I mean, and and this is this is about as in-depth as my annotations get for this chapter. I've I've sort of drawn a line next to this paragraph that we've just been quoting from and uh from and I've just written pulpit as ship. Why? And but but but maybe there is a really practical reason for it, as you as you suggest. Yeah, of course we we were we were um sort of initially laughing and then and and then sort of um and then going a bit more in depth on the on that list of C plus professions that we had a couple of chapter chapters ago. But it's true, like you know, we you've got to people we we we perhaps even talked about then the fact that people must have had to sort of diversify and be able to do the same profession on land as at sea. But also, yeah, designing pulpits surely can't be one's primary source of income. How many pulpits are there that need designing and constructing in New Bedford?

SPEAKER_03 9:02

Yeah. Unless you're a travel traveling pulpit man. But it's a roaming pulpit salesman. Yes. Anyone in town? The pulpit man's coming, like the Wells Fargo wagon. But it does speak to um I don't I I don't know how closely we're supposed to like really get into it, but it does speak to like a huge amount of control that this guy has over his space, which could mean that they take the chapel very seriously to invest the amount of money. But of course, coming off of the chapter before, we do see that the citizens spend a lot of time here, and this is a place of memorializing. And Ishmael says that uh it is not cons it's not in bad taste. It doesn't look tacky or like a gauche. It's like, yes, we are in a sea place. It's like they're let's just bring it forward. We're all sailors, we're all whalemen, we don't need to pretend that this is the same kind of chapel that would be attended by farmers or even fancy ladies like in Brooklyn or whatever, a famously fancy place. Why not bring it, um, make that part like also superficial and sort of Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

You're right, and it and Ishmael is actually very clear in pointing out that this is not just pageantry, this is not just sort of idle decor. So where where is it? He says, he writes, Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. Right. This is not just kind of stagecraft and showmanship. Interestingly, the word pulpit derives from a Latin word which also meant like a stage or a or the kind of plinth on which oratory would happen. Um so yeah, th that he's he's very quick to dispel this idea that it's just um it's just for show. There is a kind of deeper meaning to it than that.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Before we move off of this like specific aspect of this, uh one of the things I think is interesting is like kind of the afterlife of uh like the this invention on Melville's part of like this pulpit as like a uh like the bow of a ship, which is uh this chapel, uh as we we talked about in the previous episode, is like based off of the real Siemens Bethel in New Bedford, which Melville actually attended when he was uh before going whaling. Um and it didn't have the structure in it. Um but now it does. I I I assume because uh from what I can tell, it's uh because people keep asking, hey, where's the the the pulpit shaped like the bow of a ship? Um both in the the text of Moby Dick, but then also in the 1956 uh Moby Dick, which we we covered in great depth. If you uh join our Patreon, you can listen to that episode. Um but like uh it's present in that film. And so like it's it's uh they they they had to put one in, they had to build one and put it in. And so now if you go visit uh the Siemens Bethel in New Bedford, it has the the pulpit from the book, even though it wasn't original. Um kind of an interesting like physical manifestation uh or like uh uh imprint of uh this uh work of literature on like the the physical geography of New Bedford, I think, in an interesting way. Yeah, um so there's a lot that's interesting here. Uh let's start from the beginning. So we we this is our first uh introduction to Father Maple. Uh thoughts on Father Maple. He doesn't say anything yet. What do we think of like Father Maple from his entrance, from his appearance, and from his actions so far in this chapter?

SPEAKER_03 12:34

I like that he uh doesn't have uh what's it say? Um the brrrr. He carried no umbrella and hadn't come in a carriage that he just gets rained on. I think pains are made to say that he is a man of of these people, not even just of any people, but of these people. He's presumably doesn't have to walk far from his sort of like a a rectory or an apartment to the chapel. Um but his um perhaps by choice he uh wears a big hat and a coat that he decides he's gonna get soaked on the way out, and then sort of like shoves it all off, and then he's just sort of in his um the pilot jacket is like bigger or like heavier. It seems to be weighing him down because it's so um saturated, and then he hangs it up and then hauls himself up there. I like I think I like all the sort of like uh the tactile sort of um bodily sensations of like uh a real man in this in this space. I think I think that's very I think that's very charming. It makes it sound like the text is is more affectionate towards him.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah, it cut foregrounds him as almost a creature of water as well, yeah, as this kind of incredibly kind of waterlogged, but also kind of water formed individual. And then of course the content of the sermon is very, very aquatic as well. So there's a potential kind of um connection there between the circumstances of his arrival, but also his history and also what he goes on to then um make his sermon about.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Um I think it's interesting we get uh so his name's Father Mapple, and he's presented as uh uh Father Mapple was in the hearty winter of a healthy old age, that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth. For among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there's shown certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom, the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February snow. Um and I think that's an interesting image. I think it's his name's kind of interesting in that context, and like it it's very similar to like maple, uh like a tree. Like uh this idea of like this uh uh emerging spring in this like winter of age, I think is an interesting idea. I'm curious if what you what y'all think about that aspect of this character.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah, the maple uh little resonance in the name is really, really interesting and would strengthen that idea of his being a kind of a na force of nature in a certain sense. I don't know anything about the life cycle of maples and how um how relevant that might be.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yeah, I've got one in the in the front yard. Uh they're lovely trees. Um I like the the way their seeds like uh spin around like a little helicopter as they fall to the ground.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

That's really pleasing. Oh yeah. Full of full of syrup? I don't know. He's a very syrupy man, Father Mapple.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

This is not a tree-based podcast.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Oh no, but we need to line our chests for when we finish the finish the works of Herman Melville. Do a tree pod.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah, yeah, we gotta have uh our uh our our artists in residence, uh Delaney, come on to tell us about trees. I'm sure she could. Yes. Um but yeah, I I think like I don't know, like besides that this metaphor of him like kind of being like a tree, like where like you see like kind of the the the first like green of the tree popping through the snow. It's kind of like where I see like the the relationship between the name and like this uh this metaphor of of him being like this like having this youthful side, like kind of pushing through age to youth again. And like thinking about that in relation to like him as like a like a a spiritual leader, I think is like relevant.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

Isn't there a Shakespeare thing, Johnny, about second childhood or something like that?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Second childishness, yeah. It's the end of the seven ages of man speech in as you like it. Uh yeah, sons taste, sons teeth. Yes, sans everything, yes.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Which is, I think, is sad and that doesn't seem to be quite the tone we're doing here. But yeah, it's the maybe he read that before, the idea of like you loop back around, and it but it it's like a second wind brings energy, and especially if this is sort of his second calling, or if he was a a chaplain on the boat before, it seems like yeah, that we're supposed to um that he is waterlogged, but he comes in and hangs everything up and hauls himself up the ladder. We're supposed to imagine that we're what we're about to hear are the words of someone who we can believe in. I think a lot of this chapter is about like, okay, this is kind of a it's kind of theatrical, but in in um favor of a greater verisimilitude, kind of art. Are we meant to believe to imbue this person with authority, not like stage craft? I think you guys were saying that before. So it's sort of like there is not a there is a sense of um maybe self-consciousness isn't the right word, but like as he's hauling himself up the ladder, surrounded by you know, the not even the graves of you know the dead sailors, is that it's a it's an immersive space, and that we are um supposed to be filled with like the confidence of like this is a man who can stand at the bow of a ship like the captain, and he's about to take us off on um, I don't know, we can trust his word or something like that, that he's he's of this space in an authentic way.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

That and that idea of that that that second spring and that greenness adds another really interesting thread into that tapestry of greenness that we've been talking about in the last few chapters, and I think no nowhere more so than in that um insistence that Ishmael has that he's saying, Oh, I'm not green, I'm not green, I'm not green, because green is something that you don't want to be uh when green means inexperienced. But here actually we've we've got we've got Mapple being established as some somebody really who's the opposite of that. He's emerged into that kind of second greenness, which is characterized by actually by a wealth of experience.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yeah, like yeah, yeah, because like thinking about um pushing through like so thinking about like spiritual rebirth, right? So like I I think like part of this has to do with like the idea we we've already had like a lot of uh uh in the preceding chapter thoughts on like resurrection, thoughts on like spiritual rebirth as being like a related uh uh phenomenon. And so like here's this person who has been spiritually reborn, and I think in a sense, like being spiritually reborn is like akin to Greeness, in a sense, right? Like, because you like are fresh again, right? Like greenness, so like uh Father Mapple has like you know, kind of is like a sailor's sailor in his previous life. He's kind of like pushed through that, found like being like the you know, the the best sailor, best heart uh harpoonier, even, right? Um something wanting in that. And so like we don't know about like why he becomes like a uh what happens that uh causes him to go on the spiritual path, but like finding that wanting and then embracing the land and embracing greenness as opposed to being a tar or like a salt or whatever, um and like kind of pushing through that to like the there's kind of like a pleasantness and like a a newness and like a a lack of kind of uh fixedness or like set expectations and being green again, which I think is associated with like a lot of uh kind of spiritual conversion or spiritual rebirth.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah, I mean it reminds me of that amazing Philip Larkin poem, which is called The Trees, where he talks about the fact that well let me let me see if I can remember it. Maybe maybe it will be useful to us, maybe it won't be the trees are coming into leaf like something almost being said, the recent buds relax and spread, but their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again and we grow old? No, they die too their yearly trick of looking new is written down in rings of grain yet still the unresting castles thresh in full grown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, or begin afresh, afresh, afresh. And it's the idea that actually n where where something may look new and and and kind of re-vivify, but actually it's not. It is in some measure a trick.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

That was lovely.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

So um I hope I've done that right. I hope I I've I didn't I I could have just looked up the text, couldn't I? But hey-ho, it's uh it's worth what was worth a try.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

No, I I think it's worth like pausing for a second. That was really cool. Um so one of the things that was delightful, so we've had all these guests recently, and I've had uh two guests in a row ask uh like who have listened to the podcast before, uh kind of nervously ask, uh, hey, do you edit this like before it goes out, or do you just like post it? I was like, wow, that's such a compliment, uh I feel like to me as an editor that like you that didn't know that I like very clearly edit this. But that was really cool because like normally I would have had you look that up, or like you know, somebody would look that up and then read it and I would splice it so that it doesn't sound like somebody just looked it up. Oh, but you just did that off the dome. That was really cool.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Oh no. Now I really, really hope the text is right. I dare not check, but just one of the ones that rattles around in the old noggin.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

No, that was interesting. Um something something that's sorry for yeah, uh yeah, go ahead, please.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

No, just something that is not rattling around in my in in my noggin as I as as I wish it was, but but and you two will be able to correct me. always on this on this subject and this idea of Maple being some kind of um in some way being compared to a tree. Is Ahab not at some point compared to some kind of uh lightning stricken tree? Am I completely misremembering that? No there we go. There's a a a if if so a great kind of parallel there of somebody precisely who didn't choose to do what Maple chose to do. He didn't choose to furl down his sails at the point where he you know it probably would have been wise for him to do so. But actually kind of continues into the um well into the seer and the yellow leaf of being a sailor and uh and or being and being a whaleman specifically.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Yeah no I think it's interesting thing about uh Father Mapple as like a a foil to Ahab in a sense I think like I think there's like productive stuff we can do there. Possibly more when we get to the sermon itself. But yeah no I think that I I like that idea. But yeah no I'm pretty sure yeah no because he's he's been struck by lightning and that is to directly compare it to a tree like uh a tree struck by lightning.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Oh there we go there's there's there's juice in the old memory yeah yeah speaking though of of speaking of parallels with between Mapple and other characters though um and just to come back to uh a line that we've that we've uh quoted a couple of times but haven't actually uh delved into uh as much as we might this first presentation of him yes it was the famous father Maple so called by the Waleman now I don't know about you two but I can't help but feel uh uh an echo of call me Ishmael there is this man actually called Mapple or is this some kind of Elias that he goes by? Is this some kind of nickname that's been given to him by the Waleman? It's one of those classic things that Melville just drops in and then doesn't refer to again.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

That word called is so tricky. It is isn't it counterpoint or counterproposal so there's two possibilities there. So it is it that he's only called Mapple or is it specifically that they're call affectionather Mapple? And that that might not actually be like a designation that like he's maybe officially earned.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Oh that's really interesting. Oh I like both of them he's just some guy he's just some guy he's just he's a spiritual guy. Like like the pulpit builder who who also just carpent does carpentry on other things he's a he's a he moonlights as a as a priest he's a plumber normally you have to have a couple jobs.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Yeah yeah you do you do so we haven't talked about it much yet uh but this is uh father maple is like based on father taylor or Edmund Thompson Taylor um who was a contemporary of Melville's who Melville almost certainly would have like actually heard um preach because he was at the Siemens Bethel in Boston and uh Melville's wife's family is from Boston. And so like we there's pretty strong evidence that like uh he would have heard Father Taylor preach. Uh and he's basically like a very similar character um to Father Mapple and like was a very famous at the time as like being this like uh Siemens preacher uh who's very effective and like kind of did the same sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

I don't know if y'all uh have had the opportunity to look into this character at all this uh historical uh personage not about Edward Taylor though I uh did a bit of digging on on Mudge and what's interesting is that he Melville heard him preach very very shortly before he actually went aboard his first his first ship right via Cushnet for at least first whaling ship yeah yeah oh no yeah sorry I yeah um so yeah again we've got two historical figures or we've got his we've got his historical veracity blended in or kind of folded into fiction here.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah um one of the things so like uh I was looking at uh Edmund Thompson Taylor or uh Father Taylor's uh background uh he was in the War of 1812 uh on a privateer uh which was captured by a British ship and its crew was held at Melville Island which I thought was a funny little historical wrinkled classic um but like uh basically like he didn't really have any formal education uh he had this like uh uh seafaring background uh and he was a this very uh accomplished preacher specifically like uh like an itinerant preacher but then like uh he ends up at the Siemens Bethel in Boston and is becomes very famous there as like this uh this person who weaves in this this nautical language and is able to like actually like uh really connect with sailors and like specifically I think it's interesting so these like semen uh bathels like kind of part of the reason that these were propagated was uh to try to um do something about like the rampant immorality of sailors in these port cities uh like Boston like New Bedford and especially when it comes to uh alcoholism and so like one of the things that Father Taylor focused on was like temperance and like preaching against uh the you know all these caporn measures that all these sailors are having let's say the eruption of bears yeah yeah oh yes we touched a couple of chapters ago I think on this idea of okay what kind of text artifact object is Ishmael producing for us the readers of this text and I think it's very very interesting that we get the sentence that begins at the time I now write of Father Maple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age we've got a very very definite reference there to the act of constructing this narrative in written form.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah um and similarly uh like a similar uh you might also be thinking of this we get later I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this um and and then like we get the no thought eye there must be some sober reason for this thing uh furthermore it must symbolize something unseen yes um yeah and I I think yeah no I think like it's interesting like uh trying to parse uh uh Ishmael at the time and Ishmael the the writer of the text um in this particular passage in his interpretation of Father Maple he frames that in the past tense no thought I there must be some sober reason for this thing furthermore it must symbolise something unseen um or interesting that that latter clause uh seems to be more like the present tense it must symbolise something unseen it might be a classic case of Ishmael Melville contriving to have his cake and eat it uh especially hot on the heels of a phrase from the last chapter all these things are not without their meanings and then of course back in chapter one surely all this is not without meaning. I think tense is an interesting thing to pay attention to and it seems here that we get a nice blending actually of tenses and their four perspectives. I realise that's potentially quite a woolly answer. Meg, you you may have something um more objective and insightful to say as you as you normally do.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

I dig it I totally know I I love I love the I love this song. I mean this is I mean maybe it sounds absurd to say but this is like the umpteenth example so far we're not even in my copy 50 pages in but like yet another example of Ishmael's like totally like reflexive need to interpret something like we were just saying it's the shape of a ship because they're sailors. I think that's makes sense you could explain that to a kid he used to be a sailor and they're like I don't know what a ship is and like we don't maybe it doesn't need to be any deeper that but Ishmael goes no there must be something moral grasping here and we go okay and if for sir it's his book he can go there and indeed he he does um again I forget what chapter it was where we were talking about this exactly but we were saying oftentimes Ishmael will or Melville will have Ishmael put a sentence in there about interpreting between the thing to be interpreted and the interpretation. He won't just give us the metaphor he says there must be a metaphor in here like to signal and we're about to do interpretive work so put that hat on that this is another example of like not only are we interpreting but we're signposting that that's what we're about to do. Absolutely which I think is a different beast so it seems like if anything he's just like we cannot there is no new information that we can get that we can't stop and like break down into its ethos, logos, pathos like every single thing is interpretable. And indeed after this that paragraph can it be that this um the act of physical isolation he signifies his spiritual withdrawal sure okay we're in church that you know okay but then we have like another painting and then Ishmael is like here's what the painting means and we're like let's when's the sermon we're we're back to the when does church start we're back to the bulky soggy squishy picture in the spouse are in there absolutely yeah yeah there's like an angel at the other one. What could be more full of meaning he asks well okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

In fairness I feel like uh uh you spend a lot of time uh at church like waiting for the thing to start and kind of like staring around trying to uh do something with your brain I don't know it sounds like Meg got dragged to church a lot I wasn't dragged to church too much I don't know at all if you were dragged to church well that's why we like stained glass and you know for things to be on the walls for you to be like yeah I I'm assuming I don't know if we've how much we've talked about it but uh Meg I'm assuming you're from a Catholic background based on like your various uh way you talk about churches in the past that is at least you got way more stuff to look at in a Catholic church than like oh yeah lots to listen to lots to say there's movement there's like yeah lovely and the suggestion it's a 365 experience yeah for it's practically 4D the different languages yeah the Z plane yeah exactly it's all over okay you were saying something Johnny well only to to to build on what we were saying about interpretability and and Ishmael's kind of insistent um acts of interpretation and the fact that we actually get that taken a step further in the case of this painting which is in between the the the the cenotaphs uh either side of the pulpit um not only does he describe it in in great detail um he goes further than just saying oh maybe it's this maybe it's this maybe it's this you know a blasted heath or whatever it might be he actually imagines the painting is speaking there's a little figure of an angel uh within the little island of sunlight and he actually says our noble ship the angel seemed to say beat on beat on thou noble ship and bear a hardy helm for lo, the sun is breaking through, the clouds are rolling off, serenist Azure is at hand. So we actually get him ascribing language to a painting now it's sort of actually parsable language um in addition to any kind of um more kind of subterranean or kind of um obscure meaning there's a there's a really interesting that it there's there's a potential Dantean resonance there where um Dante on on the mountain of purgatory sees a series of uh freezes carved into the mountains of uh into the mountain of purgatory with examples of pride uh um being uh being punished and they are they've been divinely uh inscribed so God has carved them and they are so beautiful and so perfect that they actually seem to be speaking they actually seem to be narrating and depic uh even as they depict um uh for example uh arachne being transformed into a spider having having challenged Minerva to a weaving contest and what Dante calls it is visibile parlare visible speech and it seems that that's exactly what Melville is doing here whether that's something that he is lifting from Dante I don't know um he was rereading the Divine Comedy at least in part while he was writing Moby Dick so it's not impossible.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

No I like that um so I think maybe there's at least three more things I want to hit on before we wrap up this guy. One like the idea of uh Father Mapple's isolation like at the pulpit I think is interesting I think we get like these two interesting uh metaphors one his little Quebec and two uh I'm gonna let you pronounce this one uh Johnny I think you you've got a little bit more uh understanding of German uh a lofty Ehrenbreiten Erin Breitstein Erin Breitstein Breitstein in there yeah both of these like being uh like so uh cut like Quebec like Quebec City like uh like a citadel uh yeah so like a self-containing stronghold here uh Ehrenbreitstein with the perennial well of water within the walls I think these are uh interesting ways of talking about the pulpit and like uh very much so map on to like a lot of other ways that Melville talks about like religion when I think he's being more generous which is uh like to me like Pierre comes up a lot where we've got our uh our orologicals and chronometricals I believe is the the the pamphlet in Pierre uh a beautiful pamphlet worth reading uh but this idea that like in order to like really uh act in a Christian way like in a fully Christian way like it it's basically like uh impossible to do so while also trying to like kind of preserve yourself within the world and like it's only in this sort of uh uh the citadel that like you know he pulls up the rope behind him so nobody else can like uh like so he's like uh self-contained on this pulpit it's only in that state of being self-contained and like apart from the world kind of like as we got in the last chapter like uh these these silent um islands of people who are complete like uh can't communicate with each other this is a little bit different than that because he does communicate with the people here but it's through this it's only through this isolation that he's able to like embody uh this uh Christian like this true like Christianity and like it reminds me a lot of like kind of the the early hermits in uh the Christian tradition like the ones who'd like be up on these uh columns and like they'd just sit there on the column and people would uh bring them some food or whatever but I think that's it do you have thoughts on like the the Quebec and the Aaron Breitstein like element of that I'm really interested in what you've suggested that it points to Tristan which is a kind of paradoxical um sense of community that results from a feeling of isolation there's definitely something that's going on there in in parallel with the with the Pequab.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

These people are isolating themselves from their loved ones um as we and we we discussed this quite a bit didn't we during during Melville at the movies and you know we we get this sense that actually going to see is simultaneously an act of isolation and and an act of um very very conscious community building. I realise that's quite a secular um sort of parallel to draw but I I I wonder whether the really lovely sort of reading that you've offered there maybe also supports that. And this kind of I this kind of image of maple as a kind of prefiguration of what of how that process is going to uh is going to play out when we actually get to the um the departure of the pequad and then actually the the the the community of the of the ship itself.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Yeah I like that what about you Meg do you have any thoughts that you wanted to share on like that aspect of it?

SPEAKER_03 37:39

To me it's the idea that like this needs to be I think it's more interesting to sort of think about the idea that Ishmael wants to interpret it as something rather than when you go to church the dude stands at the front because he's gonna deliver a speech we're gonna get some more totemic moments of like the guy talking in front of everybody um soon. So like this is not the first time where we have the man who it ranks above you know the Hoy Poloi standing separately there's a lot of that on a ship famously so for me it's about this moment where Ishmael finds that he has to add something special like we don't know how church works.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Yeah and interesting like thinking about your uh to be released episode so Maple is doing this in this pulpit that's constructed like the bow of a ship versus what you get later which is where Ahab's on the quarter deck and like and like the your in your interview you you talk about like kind of the theatrics of the quarter deck and it's like special uh space like as opposed to the bow. Or as opposed to the the it's all the the the front of the ship.

SPEAKER_03 38:49

Um which I think it's well it's ritual you know it's so so it makes sense that um again again I think it goes sort of in when Ishmael was talking about like yes this is theater but it's like not tacky but also all of these people go to church. It's it it's remarkable to Ishmael because he hasn't been here before but probably the people who go every week to literally this chapel are no longer thinking about it all the time. It just becomes the chapel but because it's as Ishmael has not seen it before he finds it noteworthy. That's the only reason he and Queekwag are looking around because they haven't seen they haven't been in this space before. So it would make sense that this is the moment where Ishmael's gonna get reflective that if he came here every you know weekend for years he you know isn't interpreting anew every time he shows up.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

And it's interesting that the from the the pulpit brow uh we hear the text's first really really great piece of oratory Maple's sermon which we'll talk about in the next episode and then of course we get uh the we get that incredible piece of oratory of Ahab's from the quarter deck and that also uh Maple's is of course a very very theolog theologically undergirded piece of oratory and one of the key uh uh issues that ahab has to address in that piece of oratory from the quarter deck is blasphemy right talking not to me with blasphemy right strike the sun if it insulted me so we've almost got that there's a sense that the thematics of both speeches are kind of photonegative versions of one another even as they take place in almost physically opposed parts of the physical and sort of hypothetical ships.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Yeah I think that gets uh um really strengthened by what we have in the very end of this uh like the very last paragraph right uh what could be more full of meaning for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part all the rest comes in its rear the pulpit leads the world from thence it is the the storm of God's quick wrath is first described and the bow must bear the earliest brunt from thence it is the god of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes the world's a ship on its passage out and not a voyage complete and the pulpit is its prow. And so I think like it's it's telling that um if Ahab's speech is one that's going to be like uh like lead them all to hell it's spoken from the quarter deck and not the bow whereas Mapple like being the first one to like kind of feel like uh describe this upcoming like wrath from God is at the bow. And I think like the the metaphor of like location on the ship between these two yeah really like a the foremost speeches in the book is like intentional in that regard.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

I think you're absolutely right Tristan I love as well in a further wonderful parallel uh to as you like it like the one that Meg was pointing out earlier this idea of uh well in parallel with all the world's a stage we've got this idea here that all the world's a ship and I think it's just it's a met it's just it's a metaphor that's just so beautifully carried out. I think I think that's really that that that's really really wonderful. And I think that's that's a really interesting and I would think quite a hopeful idea actually going back to the idea of hope that I think we were talking about last time the uh the world's a ship on its passage out and not a voyage complete yeah that sense that we kind of sail on into whatever the future may hold I think it's I think it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Yeah it's interesting so I've got I'm showing off my white jacket here.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

So the so white you've also got your copy of one of Herman Melville's other novels there.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Yeah yep yep worst joke on the podcast so far? Maybe I liked it I liked it. So uh white jacket or the world and the man of war and it so this is the the the novel immediately preceding if you don't know Moby Dick and like uh the the order that he wrote the books and so um and it's one that like really beats you over the head with the idea of the metaphor of the ship as the world like it probably no more uh uh there's not any of uh his other books that like more beat you with that like metaphor it being like kind of the subtitle of the the book and it seems uh based off this chapter uh Melville's not done thinking about this even though he wrote a whole book about this idea as the like you know in in in parallel to all the world's a stage uh you know the the the ship is the world in miniature but but yeah final f final thoughts from anybody Maggie got any final thoughts for us can't wait to hear what this man's gonna say I hope it is worth all of this theater we've been led to believe we can imagine the lights going down so yes yeah that's gonna be a fun one anyway we'll see you all then and it's gonna be fun thank you very much for uh coming to church with us you've been listening to the Pequot Pod with Tristan Bavel Marquise, Meg Fansher and Johnny Wiles.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

Our music is by Lost in the Loop with sound engineering by Lauren Aiton. The show's artwork is by Delaney Garrett and Tristan is on The Synths we want to say a big thank you to all of our supporters on Patreon. You can join them over at patreon.com forward slash pequod pod for bonus content and for opportunities to help us keep the show running in ship shaped condition. Ratings and reviews also really help us out so if you enjoy the show please do express your thoughts and metaphysical yearnings in the review section wherever you're listening to the show. Tell your friends tell your foes tell the white whale on whom you're monomaniacally urged to be revenged it all helps thanks for listening and until next time call us the peacock